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chemical that, I theorized, issued from his meth-addled flesh. The Center had provided him with pills to ease the withdrawal pangs, thank God, and a plastic bottle lay overturned on his dresser, surrounded by Dr. Pepper cans and crushed Marlboro packs.
    He regarded me with a sneer.
    â€œShit ain’t workin’!” He waved his clenched fist. “I done took at least ten pills.”
    â€œProbably, um, like, an excessive, I mean, extravagant dosage,” I offered.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œToo many pills!” I shouted.
    â€œI can’t hear you!” he shrieked.
    Of course he couldn’t. His MP3 volume was so amped that I could decipher some of the lyrics spurting out ( I’ll drink your blood and eat your bones and shit you out when you are gone ). Needle shot me a lewd, cannibalistic grin and turned off his player.
    â€œFuckin’ vocabinary words,” he muttered. “I’ll ream them up your asses.”
    â€œVocabulary words?” I asked him. “What do you mean?”
    â€œVocapilary.” He eased closer to me, his zombie maw gaping. “I ain’t supposed to talk about it if I’m gonna get my cash. But they got some pip-squeak college dork teaching me how to talk.”
    â€œThat’s cool.” I backed toward my bed. “It’s all good, um, commendable, um, like, goddammit, exceptional.”
    Needle scowled and seemed on the verge of jumping me. But then his eyes went wonky and he sat on his bed.
    â€œHey, I think this shit’s working now. Ah yeah.”
    He stripped off his shirt (the poor fucker was perpetually overheated, despite the excessive air-conditioning), tossed it onto the floor, and sprawled out on his bed.
    I walked down to the communal restroom to pop my Sophiquel in peace. When I returned, the reptilian cretin had fallen into something like slumber, though Needle never ceased to fidget and mutter.
    I lay down on my bed. I closed my eyes. As I scanned the day’s events in my head, words continued to assault me from every angle. I recalled Josh leaning over me to adjust one of my BC transmitters, his ephebic mustache shining like angelic down. I envisioned Chloe, nubile and fecund, dewy as a damn daisy, caressing my cranium with her soft hands. I dallied with visions of her opalescent thighs, her delectable neck, her red, nectarous mouth. I would have resorted to onanism had Needle not been three feet away, a handy anaphrodisiac. And the Sophiquel seemed to be working, subduing the swarms of words.
    I reviewed my experience in the laboratory, trying to remember when, exactly, I’d felt language stirring in the depths of my soul like a vast flock of birds in a dark forest. I remembered the dream I’d had just before going under—not simply a dream but a bona fide flashback of Helen—vibrant, animated, pulsating with life.
    I could still recall the elusive smell of my Camaro’s moldy interior. I could hear the frogs singing. I could almost taste Helen—booze and Bubblicious and a faint hint of snot. I remembered how shame over my relative inexperience had melted away as I’d gotten lost in that endless first kiss, which brought on a whole new heap of memories about the best summer of my life.
    Helen had lost her virginity to a ferret-faced asshole named Farrell Sims, but I became her first true lover. Within a month afterfirst hooking up, we’d fallen deep into the spasmodic throes of teen coitus. Every second of every minute we dreamed of the raptures we’d taste during our free hours, in the back of my car, in forests and swamps, in air-conditioned bedrooms whenever we were lucky enough to find ourselves in an empty house. No matter what we were doing, our minds remained fixed on the bliss we’d snatch, like the crosshairs of a rifle poised brutally on a flower, some delicate concoction of dew and scent that we’d blast to sodden mash.
    We fucked in graveyards, under bleachers, in